Curating Russia: The Shchukin Collection, Nationalism, and Border Crossing from Lenin to Putin

Dublin Core

Title

Curating Russia: The Shchukin Collection, Nationalism, and Border Crossing from Lenin to Putin

Description

Russia’s relationship with nation is marred by contradictions that stem from its place in comparison to the West. Cultural nationalism in artistic production originated with the arrival of the Peredvizhniki [Wanderers] in the 1870s. Moscow merchant Pavel Tretyakov, in collecting Russian and European art, openly embraced a nation that encompassed Western ideas in conjunction with distinctly Russian themes. The unparalleled collecting of French modern art by Moscow merchants Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov in the early 20th century continued this embrace.  The nature of their collected paintings produced shockwaves in late tsarist and Soviet society and politics before being inculcated into Russian national identity in the 21st century. This article explores the life of Henri Matisse’s The Dance (1909), commissioned by Sergei Shchukin.  It follows the work across time and regimes as it assumes pride of place in not only Russia’s national collections but also within its identity. Through a focus on the 2008 exhibition From Russia at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, this article examines Russia’s relations and protection of this work to understand, why even as the country seeks to define itself once more actively through its opposition to the West, their cultural diplomacy speaks to an openness built on a transnational history of the most prized works in their national collections.

Creator

Rasmussen, Leah

Source

Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies; Vol. 15 No. 1 (2022): Summer 2022; 43-60
2562-8429
10.22215/cjers.v15i1

Publisher

Centre for European Studies, Carleton University

Date

2022-09-20

Rights

Copyright (c) 2022 Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0

Relation

Format

application/pdf

Language

eng

Type

info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article

Identifier

Citation

Leah Rasmussen, Curating Russia: The Shchukin Collection, Nationalism, and Border Crossing from Lenin to Putin, Centre for European Studies, Carleton University, 2022, accessed November 6, 2024, https://igi.indrastra.com/items/show/2814

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